UPDATE: I’m amazed by the level of emotion out there. Makes you wonder how science can be possible at all in such an emotionally charged environment. A word to the wise: Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. More fallout!:

There are lots of accusations flying about concerning the PRP journal controversy. What’s disturbing is that the whole thing seems to be on the verge of devolving into mob rule. So far there have been only accusations and mudslinging. There has been no formal investigation or due process to get to the bottom of the matter.

The law of civilization tells us that the accused are to entitled to a fair hearing before the stones get cast. There’s something out there called due process, the presumption of innocence, and allowing the accused to present a defence in an objective forum. Last I checked, most everyone was damned glad to have it.

I’M NOT PICKING SIDES HERE. My sole interest is to see to it that the accused are at least given a fair chance to present their case.

Unfortunately climate science does not operate like the other fields of science. It’s a mess and stinking-rotten to the core. Can it be that some potentially valuable, groundbreaking science gets dismissed outright because MAYBE its authors did not properly go through what has long become the climate science circus tent called peer-review?

Nicola Scafetta has asked me to publish his case here and I ask those holding the noose to first hear it out before tightening it one last time.

==============================

Before putting the noose on, could we at least get a trial?
Nicola Scarfetta

Here I would like to briefly add some comments to my previous post and also respond to two blogs articles authored by Anthony Watts on WUWT following the suppression of Pattern Recognition in Physics by the publisher, Dr. Martin Rasmussen:

I found both posts by Anthony highly misleading and subtly malicious. I would like to address the two major points here:

1) In the first post Anthony insinuated the journal was stopped because of the topic of our special issue (the planetary theory of solar and climate variation). Anthony titled his post: “The ‘planetary tidal influence on climate’ fiasco”. However, the “planetary theory” did not play any role in the decision of Rasmussen.

In fact, in a letter sent to Mörner, the accused editor of the journal, Rasmussen wrote: “While processing the press release for the special issue ‘Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts’, we read through the general conclusions paper published on 16 Dec 2013. We were alarmed by the authors’ second implication stating: ‘This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project’.” In the official version published on the PRP web-site, Rasmussen wrote: “Recently a special issue was compiled titled ‘Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts’.” Besides papers dealing with the observed patterns in the heliosphere, the special issue editors ultimately submitted their conclusions in which they doubted “the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project” (Pattern Recogn. Phys., 1, 205–206, 2013).

Thus, it is evident that Rasmussen was not disturbed at all by the astronomical aspect of our study, as Anthony Watts insinuated in his first post, which was the primary topic of our works. By his own words, Rasmussen was “alarmed” only and exclusively by a single secondary statement in our Conclusion paper (a 2-page article) where the global surface temperature projections of the IPCC for the 21st century were questioned based on our analysis. That single statement was evidently interpreted by Rasmussen as a kind of “heresy” that required the instantaneous “burning” of the entire journal without even first inquiring with the accused editors.

Very likely Rasmussen overreacted because he ignores similar questioning of the IPCC temperature projections that have recently appeared in numerous scientific papers. Indeed from his statement there is no evidence that he has read any of the papers of the special issue where one finds the arguments which the statement in the Conclusion is based on, and which is supported by numerous references to other works already published in the scientific literature.

In fact, the IPCC models have predicted a 2oC/century warming from 2000 to 2014. But this warming never materialized. The scientific community is currently wondering about the causes of the large discrepancy between the climate models and the data. A possibility that we put forth in the special issue is that solar-astronomical effects and natural cyclical variability are currently underestimated by the IPCC models and, because for the next decades the sun is projected to experience low activity, this will likely slow down the warming. When one reads the papers of the special issue, he sees that they shed serious doubts on the issue of a continued or accelerated warming that is claimed by the IPCC project, and would also easily realize that the concept is perfectly consistent with the current scientific knowledge. Rasmussen’s “alarm” is incomprehensible.

Also an article on BBC, Has the Sun gone to sleep?, published on January 17, 2014 supports our conclusion that projected low solar activity would imply colder weather for the imminent future. But Rasmussen evidently did not know anything about this recent research and misinterpreted the meaning of our research by taking a sentence out of context.

Going back to Anthony Watts’ first blog, it seems to me Anthony, who is a notorious skeptic of the planetary theory discussed in our special session, took advantage of this unfortunate situation in order to discredit the planetary theory, as Rasmussen clearly stated he had been “alarmed” not by the planetary theory, but by some secondary climatic implication of doubting IPCC temperature projections. Ironically, Anthony fully agrees that the IPCC projections are significantly overestimated but he is apparently very allergic to the fact that the physical explanation might be found in astronomical causes.

In his second post, Anthony switched the focus of his attack against the authors and editors of the special issue. Here the claimed offence was deduced from an accusation present in Rasmussen’s statement declaring that: “In addition, the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our publication ethics we expect to be followed by the editors.”

Rasmussen’s accusation is paradoxical for several reasons, and therefore invalid as I will demonstrate below. Firstly it was not present in the email sent to the editor, Dr. Mörner. In this email a weaker statement had been written: “we also received information about potentialmisconduct during the review process.”

Note the difference between the two statements. The statement written in the email to Mörner simply indicates a complaint over a “potential misconduct” that the publisher received from somebody. Here it would be interesting to know who complained – an IPCC AGW advocate with conflict of interest against our theories? The sentence then reported in the official statement, on the contrary, is a definitive verdict of “guilty.”

Rasmussen found an editor “guilty” of a malpractice without first properly investigating the issue. In fact a proper inquiry requires asking the accused to respond to the accusations: a fact that did not occur because the editors were not informed of anything. This is a case of censorship that is even worse than what was suffered by Galileo and, ironically, Copernicus himself, whose works at least were subject to a trial before being put into the index of the forbidden books.

Rasmussen’s “guilty” verdict was based on the claim that “the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis”. The literal meaning of the accusation implies the editors selected as referees were “blood-relatives” of the authors. I suspect that Rasmussen would have hard time in demonstrating his claim in a court room. But let us interpret his accusation figuratively as meaning that the editor selected as referees people who fraudulently favored the authors.

Was the review process scientifically fraudulent? This is the very point that needs to be demonstrated.

The obligation of an editor, as I understand it, is to select honest referees who can provide a professional scientific review of a paper to prevent that papers containing evident scientific flaws are published. An editor should avoid referees who are not expert in the topic and/or who could fraudulently favor or harm an author.

It is evident that simply selecting (as a referee) an expert in a scientific field who might happen to share a similar scientific interest or opinion of an author is not “nepotistic malpractice”. Would a paper advocating IPCC AGW being reviewed by a scientist who shares the same scientific view be considered “nepotistic malpractice” by Rasmussen? Moreover, for a special issue on a very narrow scientific topic, when an editor invites a restricted group of experts it may not be unusual to ask authors of other papers of the same issue to serve as referees of a paper of another author. This actually could improve the scientific quality of the special issue because authors would not want to publish their papers in special issues containing evidently flawed papers.

The problem that I have with Rasmussen’s “pal-review” accusation is that he did not demonstrate that the reviews of the papers of the special issue, as well as of the entire journal were fraudulent, (nor did he demonstrate that editors, referees and authors were blood-relative to each other). To prove the fraudulent claim he should have pointed out the existence of evident scientific errors present in all papers published by the journal so far. It is the presence of evident errors that would have demonstrated that those papers had received a poor and unprofessional review and that the editors were fraudulently trying to promote a personal ideology instead of advancing a specific field of science. But Rasmussen did not provide any evidence that the papers published in the journal contain evident erroneous claims. Rasmussen’s only “scientific” argument against our work was his erroneous claim that the IPCC temperature projections for the 21st century are valid beyond doubt and, therefore, those who questions that claim should be ignored and treated as anti-scientists. To “distance” himself from these scientists he closed the journal.

Rasmussen’s argument is not only offensive, but also absurd and hollow. Thus his accusations are groundless and based on a prejudice. He evidently rushed to judgment in fear that our research could in some way displease the IPCC establishment. For the same reasons also the accusations of Anthony Watts at his blog are equally groundless and in large part based on prejudice. Many times on his blog he was asked to point to factual errors in the papers, but he could not find any and focused only on the “appearance” of the facts interpreted in a malevolent way.

I can only testify that my papers received very professional reviews from the reviewers and especially from the editor, Dr. Morner, who dedicated a lot of his time to this project by personally reviewing and editing my papers as best as he could and, I suppose, each paper of the collections. I am fully satisfied on how my papers have been handled.

Basically it appears that Rasmussen skipped trial and hastily rounded up a lynch mob, and some in the blogosphere appeared to have been quite happy to join in.

It is evident that our work will stand or fall based on its scientific validity.

(1) We were alarmed by the authors’ second implication stating: ‘This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project’

So what? This is the direct inference of the 12 research papers (especially Papers 1,4,5,7,9,11,12).

(2) ‘the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis’

Nepotism is to favor friends and relatives without respects to qualifications. We did the opposite; the reviewer chosen were all specialists on the topics in question. It is true that they primarily were chosen among the authors of the special issue with some additional from outside. This does not mean “pal-reviewing”, but serious colleague reviewing. Most members of the author-team only new each other superficially or as authors. It is common practice when printing proceedings or collective volumes to seek the reviewers within the group, not in order to make the reviewing process less serious, but because those persons are the true experts within the field. And almost always they do a tremendously good job to improve the papers in constructive ways. So also in our case: our reviewing was simply excellent, which I am sure all persons involved would happily testify. This includes strong points and forces for relevant changes and updating. And what we achieved was a wonderful collection of papers that together make a very strong impact of elevating an old hypothesis into a firm theory saying that the solar variability is, indeed, driven by the planetary beat.”

They say never get between 2 fighting dogs. Someone’s got to do it. I don’t know who is right and who is wrong. It just sure would be nice to have both sides put forth their respective cases. Then decide as you may.

A dog fight is like dogs copulating. Chuck a large bucket of cold water over both; this will cool their ardour. Just keep the hands and balls out of the way. Once the combatants are wet and cold, they may just be ready to talk sensibly. Maybe?

(1) We were alarmed by the authors’ second implication stating: “This sheds serious doubts on the issue of a continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project”

So what? This is the direct inference of the 12 research papers (especially Papers 1,4,5,7,9,11,12).

(2) “the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis”

Nepotism is to favor friends and relatives without respects to qualifications. We did the opposite; the reviewer chosen were all specialists on the topics in question.

It is true that they primarily were chosen among the authors of the special issue with some additional from outside. This does not mean “pal-reviewing”, but serious colleague reviewing. Most members of the author-team only new each other superficially or as authors. It is common practice when printing proceedings or collective volumes to seek the reviewers within the group, not in order to make the reviewing process less serious, but because those persons are the true experts within the field. And almost always they do a tremendously good job to improve the papers in constructive ways. So also in our case: our reviewing was simply excellent, which I am sure all persons involved would happily testify. This includes strong points and forces for relevant changes and updating. And what we achieved was a wonderful collection of papers that together make a very strong impact of elevating an old hypothesis into a firm theory saying that the solar variability is, indeed, driven by the planetary beat.

Buddy, I don’t understand this continued need to tie climate skepticism to tobacco. This is another attempted linkage that convinced me that that CAGW was a crock. It is simply another ad hominum fallacy.

I have been (co-)editor of several Springer volumes and a special issue of a journal. As soon as the topic is sufficiently specialized, unusual, or new, it is inevitable that many of the reviewers will know personally many of the authors, and the two sets are not mutually distinct; if not at the personal level, then at least through mutual reading of papers. What one does in that case is to make to sure that all of the reviews are done to the highest standards possible; in fact, if the topic is new, it is in everyone’s interest to improve the quality of the papers, as it makes the work more valuable.

It is obvious that the accusations against the editors and authors of this issue of Pattern Matching in Physics were made ad hoc post facto once the IPCC criticism was removed as the primary motivation for pulling the journal.

There was nothing extraordinary in the editorial treatment of this special issue. Were Copernicus’ reasoning applied elsewhere, it would shutter every journal that ever published a special issue (more than a few by Copernicus) – especially journals with special issues on climate.

Dear Nicola and Nils, so far I am missing a time line of the events. I find it really strange that a publisher interferes with the ongoing activities of editors. Was there a contract or agreement to begin with? If so, did this agreement contain elements about the content, and about the appointment of reviewers? I have already seen general rules of Copernicus concerning reviewers and I suspect that there was no agreement because there is a deafening silence about it on the internet. Without agreement your case against Copernicus is lost and we could only talk about a fair treatment on the internet. I want to give you all the benefits of my doubt.

I am not an editor of the journal. So, I know nothing about contracts or so on.
One needs to see the documents and check with a lawyer, etc…. But this checking is something that must be done by the editors.

My comments here are thoughts that I wanted to share with the blogosphere in the hope that honest people and scientists will take them into account and read our research.

If our scientific arguments are Right or Wrong it will be Mother Nature to say.

Copernicus Publications started publishing the journal Pattern Recognition in Physics (PRP) in March 2013.
The journal idea was brought to Copernicus’ attention and was taken rather critically in the beginning, since the designated Editors-in-Chief were mentioned in the context of the debates of climate skeptics. However, the initiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines rather than to focus on climate-research-related topics. Recently, a special issue was compiled entitled “Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts”. Besides papers dealing with the observed patterns in the heliosphere, the special issue editors ultimately submitted their conclusions in which they “doubt the continued, even accelerated, warming as claimed by the IPCC project” (Pattern Recogn. Phys., 1, 205–206, 2013). Copernicus Publications published the work and other special issue papers to provide the spectrum of the related papers to the scientists for their individual judgment. Following best practice in scholarly publishing, published articles cannot be removed afterwards. In addition, the editors selected the referees on a nepotistic basis, which we regard as malpractice in scientific publishing and not in accordance with our publication ethics we expect to be followed by the
editors. Therefore, we at Copernicus Publications wish to distance ourselves from the apparent misuse of the originally agreed aims & scope of the journal as well as the malpractice regarding the review process, and decided on 17 January 2014 to cease the publication of PRP. Of course, scientific dispute is controversial and
should allow contradictory opinions which can then be discussed within the scientific community. However, the recent developments including the expressed implications (see above) have led us to this drastic decision.

Copernicus Publications wishes to distance itself from the apparent misuse of the originally agreed aims & scope of the journal as well as the malpractice regarding the review process, and decided on 17 January 2014 to cease the publication of PRP.

The accusation “However, the initiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns recognized in the full spectrum of physical disciplines rather than to focus on climate-research-related topics.” is baseless. It is not true that the aims & scope of the journal were misused. In this 10 months the journal published multidisciplinary papers in many fields of research. Just one paper fully focused on climate-research-related topics and did not belong to our collection.

Copernicus says that there was an agreement. Whether it was of the gentlemen kind, does not matter. I have understood that for the special edition a special group of editors was chosen. The subject was ‘Pattern in solar variability, their planetary origin and terrestrial impacts’.

It appears to me almost impossible that the content was defined in advance such that it should not contradict IPCC conclusions, because this would be unscientific. No editorial statute of a scientific journal would contain such a clause.

With respect to reviewers we should not concentrate on the exact meaning of nepotism. I would take the description in their general obligations for referees, articles 4/5/7 as a definition. From the rebuttal by Scarfetta and Morner above it is reasonably clear that these articles were not violated.

So it appears to me that this is breach of contract. The publisher interfered with the work of editors (without consulting them), in a way not agreed. Copernicus should continue the journal and re-appoint the editors, if the verdict was up to me.

” I could close the blog tomorrow and have plenty else to do.”
But thank you, you do not do that now!
There are few voices of ration out there and your blog is one of those, don’t let it get silent now!
I do not post often here, but I treasure many posts. Thanks for the work done!

… in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports, and “unusually severe winters in Asia and parts of North America in 1972 and 1973…pushed the issue into the public consciousness”…

This entry refers to a paper written by William Connolly, the wiki weasel that guards all entries on this topic, yet has the cheek to chirp at other authors that review papers written in the same special edition of a publication. Connolly openly refers to his own convoluted view of the Global Cooling on a wiki page that he patrols.

Well, even todays ultra alarmist IPCC scientists leave a hatch open for their inevitable climbdown; they are only 95% certain that anthropogenic CO2 does anything to the climate; and will be 97% certain on the next iteration…

Pfft. Its a peer-reviewed paper. If you disagree with the referenced material within it, please fell free to make a coherent case, and I’ll be interested to listen. Just saying “its wrong. And you know how I know its wrong? Because it disagrees with my preconceptions, that’s how” won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you.

It certainly helps to have to have a megaphone like the CNN, Drudge or, when it comes to climate, WUWT. And I’ll add that the warmist side has had the mass media megaphoning its side for over 20 years. Too bad the science has been wrong for the last 15. I suggest you go on now and keeping looking for that missing heat.

I think you’ve misunderstood my point. Various people have said “we don’t need no stinkin’ peer review, get those gatekeepers out of the way”. And here we have a example where all the gatekeepers have gone: via blogs, you can put whatever you want up on the web, free of interference. But you’re still not happy: you find another problem: no-one can find the words you want them to read. So you’re back to the need to have PR, or some other system, to act as flow-control (or gatekeepers, if you prefer) in order to filter.

People seem to be reluctant to acknowledge the value of PR as a filter.

We can agree that peer-review has its merits, of course. But it is in no way a certification of the “Truth”. The problem is that it’s conducted by humans, who have prejudices, weaknesses, limited knowledge etc. and so the process will always be quite imperfect and always have only a limited impact on ensuring quality…especially when billions of euros and politics are mixed in. Of course we need peer-review. But if it’s polluted and corrupted, it can do more harm than good.

All that “peer review” means is that two or three other people have been found that agree with you. Under that criteria the Flat Earth Society Journal was peer reviewed. (http://www.tfes.org) Peer review means next to nothing. William, you of all people should realize this. Your stuff has been peer reviewed, peer rebutted, and edited, by thousands.

William Connolley
22. Januar 2014 at 09:46 | Permalink | Reply
“Blogs are free. Anyone can start one, and anyone can present their case entirely free of censorship. Of course, making anyone read what they say is harder.”

It’s a pity, weasel, that no one reads your “slashing the throat of science” blog, right? Well, you can always vandalize the wikipedia like you’ve been doing for a decade.

Didn’t make the GCM’s any better though. A wasted life, weasel, that’s what you have.

My understanding of the referee issue is that the primary editor had difficulty in recruiting external volunteers, so had to use suitably qualified “internal” candidates.

Instead of burying this fact behind the usual anonymity it would appear that the editor chose to publish the name of the “internal” referee (presumably with their agreement) in each paper this occurred. Normally it would have taken an internal investigation by the publishers to find out this information

It is therefore the publication of the names that has led to accusations of pal review.

The very fact of publication implies that the editor acknowledges the referee situation was not ideal. However he has not attempted to cover this up or to mislead anyone and should be given due credit for that.

In the end the real test of these papers will be time and further research.

Oh good. That seems to be different from your previous “It’s just one single hurdle in the progress of science”.

> But it is in no way a certification of the “Truth”.

Of course not. But I don’t know why you’re saying that, since everyone already agrees with it. I could quote you RealClimate posts saying exactly the same thing.

> The problem is that it’s conducted by humans

Errm, well, yes, just like all other human-type processes. That’s hardly a complaint relevant to talking about PR.

> Peer-review is shorthand for ‘has the central politic bureau in Moscow read and approved this document’, something we never used to bother with in the old free West.

This is so hyperbolic that its silly. You can’t contribute meaningfully to the debate if you’re going to talk like this. We had peer review in “the old free West”. Peer review *does* mean that the papers have been through some level of quality control – or at least, that’s what its supposed to mean, and its why this particular journal has problems: it looks like their peer review wasn’t worth the name.

Little Willy, The Economist, a British weekly newspaper, discussed the merits and demerits of Peer Review at length in its edition of 19 October 2013. The conclusion is that peer review is useless, almost the same value as a PhD in climate science, or a wiki article edited by a reviewer that pushes his own junk.

The merits and demerits of peer review are discussed at length in an article in the Economist, a British weekly newspaper ( yes, check, it calls itself a newspaper, I suspect it is to save money on postage) of 19 October 2013.

The summary is that peer review is flawed, and that the nature of peer review did change in the last few decades.

2. The real test of a decent paper is that ALL the data and ALL the code and ALL the methods are shown.

All peer-review does is (hopefully) catch grammar mistakes, make sure there is no glaring errors and the report is readable and not plagiarized. This last point is why someone familiar with the field is absolutely necessary.

A pooled weighted average of 1.97% … of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% .. for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Meta-regression showed that self reports surveys, surveys using the words “falsification” or “fabrication”, and mailed surveys yielded lower percentages of misconduct. When these factors were controlled for, misconduct was reported more frequently…

Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct….

With researchers reporting “up to 72% for other questionable research practices,” the ONLY thing that prevents that sort of misconduct is insisting on ‘Show Your Work’ verification and validation. Peer-review does diddle squat.

The Climastrologists must be rolling on the floor laughing at us since they got Anthony to take the “Peer-reviewed Science” is the ONLY GOOD SCIENCE” bait hook, line and sinker and now have us in a ‘lets you and he fight mode.’

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